XPost: nyc.politics, nyc.general, nyc.announce 
  
 In <1160772594.148490.50000@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> by 
  dogglebe@yahoo.com on 13 Oct 2006 13:49:54 -0700 we perused: 
 *+-The plane crash, much like the bicycle incident, are both just 
 *+-tragedies of the day.  In a few days, another one will pop up and 
 *+-people will scream for something to be done about it. 
  
 Well, that's why the framers deliberately put so many dampers in the 
 process.. If you could pass a law instantaneously, the clutter would 
 be unsufferable.. unfortunately, all this talk of egovernment misses 
 this point.. 
  
    Bickel, Morality_of_Consent,Yale,1975 
  
    p24 valueless institutions are shameful and shameless and, what is more, 
 man's nature is such that he finds them, and life with and under them, 
 insupportable 
    p27 The state regulates and licenses restaurants and pool halls..  why 
 may 
 it not similarly regulate and license abortion clinics 
    p38 Taney [in Dred Scott], by an ipse_dixit, argued that when the 
 Constitution says "people" it means the same thing as citizens.  Yet the 
 Constitution says citizens rarely, and people most of the time, and never 
 the 
 two interchangeably. 
    p53 A relationship between government and the governed that turns on 
 citizenship can always be dissolved or denied. 
    p65  Political speech, said the Court, is often "vituperative, abusive, 
 inexact" [394 US at 708] 
   p77  We had better recognize how much is human activity a random 
 confusion, 
 and there is no final validity to be claimed for our truths. 
    p86 So we are content, in the contest between press and government, with 
 the pulling and hauling, because in it lies the optimal assurance of 
 both privacy and freedom of information. Not full assurance of either, 
 but maximum assurance of both. Madison knew the secret of this 
 disorderly system, indeed he invented it. 
    p88  We thus contrive to avoid most judgements that we do not know 
 how to make. 
    p92 we can find a connection between some at least of Mr. Nixon's men 
 and part at least of the radical Left. Ideological imperatives and 
 personal loyalty prevailed over the norms and commands of the legal 
 order. They kept faith with their friends, and had the guts to 
 betray their country 
    p121 need to structure institutions so that they might rest on 
 different electoral foundations and in the aggregate be better 
 able to generate consent 
    p122 [Watergate] leaf from the Warren Court's book, but the presidency 
 could undertake to act anti-institutionally in this fashion with 
 more justification because, unlike the Court, it could claim not 
 only a constituency but the largest one 
    p141 When bushels of desires and objectives are conceived as moral 
 imperatives, it is natural to seek their achievement by any means 
    p142 But if we do resist the seductive temptations of moral imperatives 
 and fix our eye on that middle distance where values are provisionally 
 held, are tested and evolve within the legal order - derived from 
 the morality of process, which is the morality of consent - our moral 
 authority will carry more weight. The computing principle Burke urged 
 upon us can lead us then to an imperfect justice, for there is no 
 other kind 
  
          --- 
  
     Chas Beard PSQ 27#1 3/12 Supreme Court  - Usurper or Grantee? 
  
    p2 The arguments advanced to show that the framers of the Constituion did 
 not intend to grant to the federal judiciary any control over federal 
 legislation may be summarized as follows. Not only is the power in question 
 not expressly granted, but it could not have seemed to the framers to have 
 been granted by implication. THe power to refuse application to an 
 unconstitutional law was not generally regarded a sproper to the 
 judiciary. In a few cases only has state courts attempted to execrice such a 
 power, and these few attempts had been sharply rebuked by the people. Of the 
 memebers of the COnvention of 1787 not more than five or six are known to 
 have regarded this power as a part of the general judiciary power; and 
 Spaight and three or four others are known to have held the contrary 
 opinion. It cannot be assumed that the othe rforty-odd members of the 
 Convention were divided on the question in the same proportion. If any 
 conclusion is to be drawn from their silence it is rather that they did not 
 believe that any such unprecedented judicial power could be read into the 
 Constitution. This conclusion is fortified by the fact that a proposition to 
 confer upon the federal judges revisory power over federal legislation was 
 four times made in the Convention and defeated 
    p23 After lengthy debates on the draft submitted by the Committee of 
 Detail, a committee of five was created to revise and arrange the style of 
 the articles agreed to by the Convention; and Johnson, Hamilton, Morris, 
 Madison and King were selected as members of this committee. Of these five 
 men four, Hamilton, Morris, Madison and King are on record as expressly 
 favoring juducual control over legislation. There is some little dispute as 
 to the share of glory to be assigned to single members of the committee, but 
 undoubtedly Gouvernour Morris played a considerable part in giving to the 
 Constitution its final form 
    p28 The men who framed the federal Constitution were not among the 
 paper-money advocates and stay-law makers whose operations in state 
 legislatures and attacks aupon the courts were chiefly responsible, Madison 
 informs us, for the calling of the Convention. The framers of the 
 Constitution were not among those who favored the assaults on vested rights 
 which legislative majorities were making throughout the Union. On the 
 contrary, they were, almost without exception, bitter opponents of such 
 enterprises; and they regarded it as their chief duty, in drafting the new 
 Constitution, to find a way of preventing the renewal of whatthey deemed 
 "legislative tyranny" 
    p30 No historical fact is more clarly established than the fact that the 
 framers of the Constitution distrusted democracy and feared the rule of mere 
 numbers. Almost every page of Madison's record bears witness to the fact 
 that 
 the Convention was anxiously seeking to solve the problem of estabalishing 
 property rights on so firm a basis that they would be forever secure against 
 the assaults of legislative majorities. If any reader needs a documented 
 demonstration of this fact, he will do well to turn to the Records of the 
 Convention, so admirably compiled by PRofessor Farrand. Let him go through 
 the proceedings of the Convention and see how many of the members expressed 
 concern at the dangersof democracy and were casting about for som ememthd of 
 restraining hte popular ranch of the govenment. THe very system of checks 
 and 
 balances, which is built upon the doctrine that the popular branch of 
 government cannot be allowed full sway, and least of all in the enactment of 
  
 [continued in next message] 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)